IN THE NEWS | 21 May 2017

OWON: Hell NO, we won't Pay this! No point in even talking about it. You want a trade war - fine. Take back all your migrant workers, stop selling to us - that's fine, so explain that to your car workers, vineyards, component suppliers and so many more.We really don't care if you cause us to stop our tourists coming, fill your own hotels. See how your real estate bombs if we walk. We don't need you. Walking will save us c£20B a year in subsidies to you.

David Davis rules out discussion on cost of leaving EU before talks on future trade.

The UK will quit talks on leaving the European Union unless the bloc drops its demands for a divorce payment as high as €100 billion, British Brexit secretary David Davis has said.

Britain’s negotiations would otherwise be plunged into “chaos”, Mr Davis said in a weekend interview, and even a £1 billion settlement would be “a lot of money”.

The size of Britain’s exit bill, and which types of negotiations can begin before it has been agreed, has been a source of debate for weeks. European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has said the UK will have to pay some £50 billion (€58.2bn), while Luxembourg’s prime minister Xavier Bettel has signalled a figure between €40 billion and €60 billion.

The Financial Times estimated the cost could balloon to €100 billion, while a study by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales put the cost at as low as £5 billion (€5.8bn).

British prime minister Theresa May’s government has said it will meet its commitments to the EU, but has questioned how Brussels officials reached their preliminary estimates.

“We don’t need to just look like we can walk away, we need to be able to walk away,” Mr Davis said. “Under the circumstances, if that was necessary we would be in a position to do it.”...

US investigators are divided over whether there was a mole within the CIA or if China hacked the spy agency's communications.

The Chinese government "systematically dismantled" CIA spying operations in China and killed or imprisoned up to 20 informants over a two-year period, according to reports.

Quoting 10 current and former US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, the New York Times described the intelligence breach as "one of the worst in decades".

Between 18 and 20 CIA sources were killed or imprisoned in China between 2010 and 2012, the Times claimed.

One informant was shot in front of colleagues in a clear warning to anyone else who might be spying, the paper claimed.

The losses were comparable to the number of CIA assets lost in the Soviet Union and Russia as a result of betrayals by two infamous spies - Aldrich Ames and FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who were arrested in 1994 and 2001, respectively - the report said.

Some investigators suspected a former CIA operative of being a mole, but failed to gather enough evidence to arrest him and he is now living in another Asian country, the report said.

But others have rejected the mole theory believing instead that the Chinese had hacked the covert system the CIA used to communicate with its foreign sources.

The Chinese activities began to emerge in 2010, when the US spy agency had been getting high quality information about the Chinese government from sources deep inside the bureaucracy, four former officials told the Times.

The information began to dry up by the end of the year and the sources began disappearing in early 2011, the report said...

OWON: The statistics are awful and even more so when you look at the US as the world's largest single consumer economy.If consumerism is to continue then the country needs a great deal of help to restart. Sadly it also says little for everyone else who depends on the US as a consumer market. America is dying, a failed economy as Eurasia grows, why continue funding a bloated military the country can no longer afford. Where's the Wall Chump? Paid for that yet?

There was some good news and some not so good news in the Fed's latest annual Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households.

First the good news.

The report, based on the Board's fourth annual Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking conducted in October 2016, presents a "picture of improving financial well-being among Americans", at least according to the report (read on to see if this is merited). Overall, 70% of the more than 6,600 respondents said they were either "living comfortably" or "doing okay," up 1% from 2015 and up 8% from the first survey results in 2013.

Not surprisingly, the highest percentage, or 92%, of those who responded they were "living comfortably" was among the group with more than $100,000 in family income. For Americans making less than $40,000 the breakdown was almost evenly split with 49% saying they are "just getting by." According to the same study, 28% of respondents said that their income in the last 12 months was less than $25,000, and 40% report that their income was less than the key $40,000 cutoff, which suggests that roughly 4 in 10 Americans are "finding it difficult to get by."

The improvements in well-being as reported by the survey respondents were concentrated among high-income adults, with at least some college education, and prompted the WSJ to write that "U.S Household financial health improved in recent years." Even so, most of the changes reported in the survey were relatively modest, "reflecting a slowly improving economy and an unemployment level at or below 5% throughout 2016."

Now, the not so good news.

Nearly eight years into an economic recovery, nearly half of Americans didn’t have enough cash available to cover a $400 emergency. Specifically, the survey found that, in line with what the Fed had disclosed in previous years, 44% of respondents said they wouldn’t be able to cover an unexpected $400 expense like a car repair or medical bill, or would have to borrow money or sell something to meet it. Troubling as this statistic remains, the overall share of adults who would struggle to come up with $400 in a pinch has declined by 2% from the last survey conducted in 2015, and down 6% since 2013.

Of the group that could not pay in cash, 45% said they would go further in debt and use a credit card to pay off the expense over time. while a quarter would borrow from friends of family, and another 27% just couldn’t pay the expense. Others would turn to selling items or using a payday loan...

A mysterious cold spot in space might be evidence of a parallel universe.

Scientists have long been looking for an explanation for the strange, dark area in the cosmic microwave background – the radiation leftover from the big bang. A range of different explanations have been proposed, but the main one isn't likely to make sense and it could actually be a parallel universe.

More specifically, the area could be the consequence of a collision between two different universes. It might be the first ever evidence of the theory of the multiverse – that there are billions of other universes, some of them just like our own, lurking outside the one that we can see.

The cosmic microwave background covers the entire sky, and scientists have been able to map out the radiation across the universe. It is mostly equally distributed and the same temperature – but one important cold spot stands out.

Until now, the most popular explanation has been that it is the result of a supervoid. Where the cold spot can be seen was actually a large space filled with very universes, scientists proposed...